Terror Australis
by The Irrelephant
Summary: Life's hard in what's left of the great southern land. If you're lucky, the old lady will let you live and die in peace. Lizzie Uradla wishes she was so lucky. So does her home town. By the time the dust settles, odds are the entire bloody country will agree.
1. Chapter 1

Fallout: Terror Australis. November 2160.

Chapter 1: No worries, mate.

It was dawn, the fierce summer heat already beginning its daily pounding on the corrugated iron rooftops of the Bridge, last stop on the dead road to old Adelaide. Lizzie Uradla glared at the water tower and the patch of red clay mud beneath its rusted frame, her gaze harsher than any mere solar body. Some idiot had shot a hole right through the bloody thing and slowly but surely the towns lifeblood had been pissed away overnight. If it wasn't empty yet it would be well before she could rouse Johnno, the towns second most skilled repairman, to come down and consider clambering up the rickety ladder that led to what passed for a water tank. If he was even sober enough to make it up the ladder. There was no chance of getting his father Barry – the towns official tinkerer and odd job man – conscious before noon. There'd been a piss-up in the bar the night before to welcome the last caravan of the season and everyone who was anyone had been there. Barry may not have been anyone, but he was anyone's once you got a few in him. He'd be out cold in any bed but his own.

She sighed and cursed whichever incompetent had used the tower for target practice. "Fucking drongos" she muttered "they haven't shot an emu in weeks. Not even when one of the feathered mongrels walked right down the main street and took a nap outside the bar. Probably thought it was one of their drinking buddies. But get one tinnie into them and suddenly they think they can shoot a magpie off the bloody tower."

Lizzie scowled once again. There was nothing else for it. She'd have to drag Johnno out of his bed and force him up the ladder while there was still a drop of water up there. Then she'd have to break the news to the Mayor. And then, if she still had her head, she could bunk off somewhere quiet for a smoko once it was safely somebody elses problem.

Finding Johnno wasn't going to be the hard part, Lizzie realised. The old caravan (a pre-war model Barry swore he'd restored himself) just off the main street, attached to a workshop of cinderblocks and corrugated iron, surrounded by old junk and failed ideas was where he could always be found. Quietly aloof from the slow drawl of the town, pondering over this and that, endlessly experimenting with some new gizmo he'd thrown together out of scrap and sweat. He kept his distance from people while the occasional explosive malfunction of his homebrewed machinery and slightly more common explosions of his homebrew still made the townsmen all the more thankful for it. Indeed the sight of his stocky, bald form, hair burnt off and skin tanned almost black by a life in front of the forge, ambling genially towards you was generally considered the second most terrifying thing the Bridge had to offer after the ever-present threat of a giant Mulga lurking in your outhouse. Making her way through the figurative – and sometimes literal – minefield of spare parts between the dirt street and his front door wasn't even going to be the hard part, Lizzy thought, as she carefully wound her way through the piles, being sure to jab any particularly threatening junk piles with a long stick before stepping close. Getting him to just do the job and not try to improve on everything would be the hardest part.

The front minefield successfully navigated, Lizzy made a beeline for the workshop. Even at this early hour with the sun still lazily peaking over the horizon, Johnno would be out in his shed pottering away. Except that he wasn't. A cursory peek through the parts of the shed not completely obscured by debris failed to turn up any part of the tinkerer. Unwilling to risk life and limb combing through the mess of tire piles and discarded instruments, Lizzy settled on the next best thing: Yelling at the top of her lungs.

"Oi, Johnno. Grab your tools and get out here. Some drongo shot up the water tower and I need you to fix it". Silence followed. Giving in to her frustrations, Lizzy lashed out and kicked over one of the smaller junk piles, replacing quiet with the resonant clang as ancient odds-and-ends scattered over the floor. Some seconds later, that sight of a small bald head peaking over one pile at the back caught her attention

"Elisabeth, how many times do you need to be told? Don't disturb me when I'm in the shed. This is all very sensitive work. You could ruin a months effort".

"Right now Johnno, I don't care. Get your shit and go fix that tower before we get to spend all summer drinking Brahmin piss."

"Get Barry to do it. This is important."

"I'm not turning over every bed in the town looking for Bazza when you're right in front of me. Get your shit, climb up that ladder and fix our god damned tower before none of us have any water left".

"You'd still have my beer. People pay for that." He said, eyes lighting up.

"John, piss and piss isn't a choice. A month on your grog and I'd rather go bother the Brahmin. Now move before I grab this rope and drag you out there" she snarled, gesturing at a loop of thick, rough fencing rope.

"Fine, fine. I'm going:" he muttered. A few minutes later, he emerged from the stacks with a heavy leather bag slung over one bare shoulder.

Half an hour later, Lizzy was leaning against a strut of the water tank, drifting in and out of sleep as Johnno alternated between quiet muttering and bouts of thumping sheet metal with one of the many strangely-shaped tools he'd taken up in that seemingly bottomless leather bag. After one particularly foul staccato bout of profanity, Johnno began to timidly clamber down a few rungs and yelled out, startling Lizzy back to wakefulness.

"Are you going to let me down now?"

"That depends. Have you fixed it yet?"

"That's a complicated question to ask, Elisabeth"

"That's a no, then. Ok, look, tell me what the problem is and maybe I'll let you down while I go fetch the Mayor."

"In laymans terms? Its fucked. The bullet didn't just go penetrate, its ricocheted around perhaps seven times and accrued significant structural damage to the whole tank. Maybe eight times, might have been more than one bullet. In short" he shook his head in dismay "it'll have to be scrapped. You fill it again and the whole thing could rupture at any moment."

"That bad?"

"Would I still be at the top of this precariously rusted ladder if it wasn't? "

"Fine, get down in one piece and I'll go find the boss"

Finding the Mayor was, of course, the simplest task you could give a native of the Bridge. The ramshackle government of the city had, in the years after the Great War, simply taken up residence in an old stone cottage near the centre of the town (no doubt over the objection of anyone living there are the time) and never left. Now one of the few perks to being responsible for the last town on the dead-end traders route from the east was getting to live in the last building that had yet to need patching up with wood and sheet iron. Ancient stone, a relic of centuries before the great war, had ridden out the ravages of time better than any of its inhabitants. Lizzy smiled as she looked over the side door, one hinge hanging loose. There had to be some upside to running this place or they'd be back to electing people at gunpoint, but even the face of the town had developed its share of beauty marks. Three sharp knocks rapped out on the door, a pause, and then three more. Universal signal for 'let me in, this is important'.

"Come in" came the voice from inside, a smoky voice raised on home whisky and raw tobacco "but whatever you're here for better be important. Its too bloody early."

Liz carefully propped the door open, feeling a wash of stale beer and cigarette smoke mingle with the fresh air outside. The back room of the council chambers stank like the aftermath of every piss-up. People must have come back here after she'd closed the pub last night. Taking a deep breath of the dusty air, she braved inside.

Mayor Stephanie Bo was sitting back on an old rocking chair, legs sprawled over the ancient slab of battered wood that passed for her work desk, poking with her foot at a large glass still half full of some brown liquor. The heavy curtains had been pulled shut and a small candle flickering bravely did more to cast shadow than it did to bring light. Which did little to make her look approachable, for Stephanie was a tall, hardbitten women with an angular face and rough hands that spoke of many scorching days outside and hard nights around the fireplace passing whisky and snuff. She'd been a Brahmin herder before her two loves – yelling at people and brandishing firearms – had led her into a position of something approaching responsibility. Even five years on, It showed in every inch of her demeanour.

"Out with it, kid" she said, shielding her eyes from the light skulking in through the open door. "I'll be a lot happier when you shut the door and let me get into my hair of the dingo."

"Do you want the bad news or the terrible news first, auntie?" Lizzie answered, standing well back.

"Unless one of the traders managed to choke on his own vomit again, I'm don't care. Gods of the River, Lizzie, you saw everyone at the pub last night. You ought to know better than to come thumping on the door at dawn"

"Dawn was an hour ago, Auntie. Besides, I rolled everyone onto their sides when I closed up so they'll live. Even if they might not want to. You know, they got into Barry's special stuff. The one that sticks glasses to the table and catches fire if you leave it in the sun. But that's not why I'm here. We've got something of a problem with the water tower."

"Somebody pinch an extra ration again?"

"Not quite. It's a…. " Lizzie paused "….rather big problem. I've had Johnno come out and take a look but he hasn't been very helpful".

"Elisabeth" the Mayor said, drawing out every syllable like a teacher calling out an unruly student "stop rambling and tell me. I promise, whatever it is, its not as bad as you think."

"Someone put a bullet into the tower. It's fucked."

"Fucking hell" Stephanie exploded and Lizzy took a quick step back "how much did we lose?"

"Almost all of it. Johnno thinks we've got maybe a tenth of a tank left." That had been an interesting few minutes, hearing the bald man snarling curses and calculations under his breath as he tried vainly to work out just how little remained in the ramshackle tower.

"Shit. Fuck. God fucking damnit. Right at the start of summer and all we've got is a giant fucking mud puddle. We won't get any water back from that, sun'll bake it dry." A swipe of her bare heel sent the glass hard into the stone wall behind Lizzy as her hands began harshly rubbing at her temples, almost gouging motions as she thought. Minutes passed in utter silence before Lizzy found her voice.

"It gets worse. Johnno says the whole insides are a mess. He can patch it, but it'll just tear open again. The whole thing needs to come down",

"For fucks sake" more vigorous rubbing "maybe we should have let him go over it last winter, Not that it matters now."

"Right, I know how we're going to handle this. Get Johnno and bring him here. Then round up everyone who can still stagger, tell them we're holding a council meeting at midday. Attendance isn't mandatory, but I'll come round and put a boot up the arse of anyone who doesn't show, less they're on their deathbed. But before you go, grab me that black bottle off the shelf behind you. Don't worry about a glass. Its not a day for that sort of thing."

As the sun climbed closer to its noonday blaze, Lizzy sat slumped under the big eucalyptus tree in the town square, taking a well deserved breather. Finding everyone had been hard, sweaty work. There were perhaps a hundred people in the town not counting any transients (and they were all staying out in the rooms behind her brothers pub, easily found if anyone ever cared to do so) and normally a muster of that size would have taken all day to draw in the stragglers from the farmsteads dotted around the Bridge, on both sides of the narrow river it sat beside. But everyone had come in for the pissup, celebrating – or perhaps mourning – the arrival of the seasons last travellers. None would bother braving the broken tracks amidst summers heat, so the Bridge would be left to its own quiet isolation until summer broke. And that made finding the both much simpler and maddeningly frustrating. No-one would go to the effort of stumbling home when there was a warm bed closer to hand, but the denizens of the Bridge – indeed of the burnt land in general – had a very loose definition of bed. Most had curled up under a friends roof but for the unlucky, the stubborn and the completely inebriated, the empty dilapidated buildings that occupied most of the town were good enough.

Trouble was, they were also good enough for Mulgas, Giant Redbacks, Blueys and the odd Spiny Devil curled up for a snooze, amongst many other critters that uneasily made their home on the edge of what passed for civilisation. Mulgas were peaceable enough if you didn't tread on them, preferring to slither off under whatever cover could hide their bulk. Redbacks were hard to miss from a kilometre away unless you were colourblind (and if you were, the bush had far worse surprises in store). But Blueys were never a welcome surprise and, while normally content to amble along in their own world, a Spiny Devil could be relied on to attack anything when roused. Small wonder that the citizens of the Bridge considered themselves naked without a weapon to hand. Down here, you don't even make a visit to the outhouse unless you've got your stick in hand. You never know what might be lurking in there.

And so going from house to derelict house became a slow march, striking hard on whatever was left of the door, stepping back in a hurry in case the occupants weren't happy about being woken, yelling through the door about the town meeting and moving sullenly to the next building where it'd all be done again. But she'd managed it well ahead of midday and now Lizzy took the opportunity to take a quick nap beneath the ancient dead eucalyptus in the town square.

The dull buzzing of the gathered crowd gradually pulled Lizzy back to consciousness. People were talking anxiously, having little idea of why they'd been dragged out or how it mattered more than their prodigious collective hangover. But the people of the Bridge could read moods as well as any station man could read his Brahmin. And they knew something was off. To call a town meeting on no notice, the day after the holy day of the public, meant that things were serious. And nothing worries an Australian more than being serious.

It was almost noon now, the dull summer sun beating down upon the heads of the townsfolk wisely hidden by heavy felt hats with broad brims. Realising her vantage point up the back left her unable to get a glimpse past the crowd, Lizzy did what any bored and short lady would do: She poked the tree branches savagely with her spear and, satisfied any potential surprises had been warned off, scrambled up the rangy tree for a better view. Just in time, she realised, to see Stephanie begin her ascent up the wooden stairs to the worn stone platform that served as the speakers corner. The crowd grew hushed as they caught a glimpse of the mayor clambering into view. If the boss had something to say, people were damned well going to hear it.

Having successfully negotiated the battered stairs, Stephanie Bo paused for a moment and motioned the crowd to step closer. It wasn't a large crowd, the Bridge had bled people figuratively and literally over the years, but it was still perhaps the largest gathering many of them had seen in months. They pressed in towards the stage and, Lizzy noted with some disdain as she felt the tree branch dig in uncomfortably, left plenty of room to see from her former vantage point.

"Brothers, Sisters, Fellow Travellers." the Mayors voice boomed out "You know I would not bring you all out here without a bloody good reason. Well, I've got the best one we've seen in years." She paused, motioning to someone in the crowd.

"Now before I stop and talk everyones ear off about the problem, I just want you all to understand we have a plan in place. It isn't pretty, but it will work if everyone does their part." She paused again, this time pointing to someone buried in the crowd.

"Truth be told, some drongo shot out our water tower last night. It's a right mess. We can't live off the river water less we want to be glowing like the dead center and we've all known for years our wells ain't deep enough to last forever. So we've got two options." Stephanie stopped again, scanning the crowd for someone or something. A few seconds too long, and Lizzy could see the frustration flash across Stephanies face for the briefest of moments.

"I don't know about you lot, but I'm not ready to leave the old place. Which gives us only one option, less you like the idea of an early coffin. We need to dig our wells down and for that we need machinery for the job. Only one place we're going to find that, course. Old Adelaide."

A bottle flew through the air, a country mile wide of the platform. Some brave soul yelled out from deep within the mob.

"Which poor souls you gonna send down there, Stephie? Ain't no-one come back the last three times. 'S why the traders don't go no further no more".

The mayor shot a withering glance into the crowd, though Lizzy couldn't see if she was glaring at the speaker or the world in general.

"Keep running your mouth, Kevin." a wry grin flashing across her tanned face "There's only a few we could send."

"Bet it ain't none of your kin" came the barked reply.

"If only, Kevvo." Stephanie sighed theatrically. "We already know who's going: Johnno, because he's the only one who bloody well knows what he'll need. The idiot who got us into this mess, he's going too. Earn his redemption afore I hang him by the balls. And …" she gestured up towards the tree as Lizzy felt a frozen knot the size of a mulga slither into her gut "my niece Lizzy. She volunteered, weren't nothing I could do to talk her out of it."

And with that, a great cheer went up from the relieved crowd, completely drowning out the bellowing curses of Elisabeth Uraidla.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: She'll be right.

"You screwed me, Auntie. Screwed me hard." Snarled Lizzie.

Following the announcement, most of the crowd had quietly dispersed with amiability of people who can be confident that, whatever the issue, it was now firmly someone elses problem and they could be sure of having success or, failing that, a suitable scapegoat. The few whose problem it still was had retreated to the old stone cottage to discuss vital issues such as who was really to blame. And thus Lizzie stood on one side of the ancient wooden desk while Stephanie sat on the other, lounging in her chair with everyone else involved trying their damndest to keep a distance from the pair without appearing unduly terrified.

"Screwed you?" Stephanie lent in, hands clapsed beneath her chin. "No, I just made you. And after you dropped a pile of shit on my plate this morning." She theatrically slid an empty glass across the desk, motioning for someone – anyone – to pour out a drink. "Listen Lizzie. You pull this off, you'll run this little town till you're ready to hang up the hat."

"If I pull this off? Fuck, I can't believe you're even talking like that'll happen. Last caravan went down there was twenty strong and ain't one of them came back. You just sold me up the river to save your own lousy hide." She snatched the closest bottle from the wall and took a deep draught. It burned like hell, colliding with the ice in her gut and churning up hard.

"Ain't no if about it. You'll do it. Because you haven't got a damned choice, any more than I did."

"Damned right I don't. You held this shit behind your back because you knew I'd never agree to slitting my own throat like this." Lizzie took another swig and shifted her grip on the bottle. As if on cue, the Mayors off hand slid below the desk, her other tightening around the glass.

The town council took a small step back. Elizabeth Uraidla was notorious for keeping order in the pub with whatever came to hand. Old Stephie Cho had been the regions most notorious brawler before age and responsibility had confined her violence towards the enemies of the town. No-one wanted to get between the pair. No-one wanted to miss the fight by bolting early.

"Course I did. If I'd told you, you'd have been halfway to bloody Meningie before the meeting even got started. You're not stupid Lizzie. Which is half the reason you're gonna go and the whole reason you're gonna come back".

"Still stupid enough to trust you. Whats the other half of the reason you think I'm gonna go through with this idea of yours?",

"Because you're as local as the bridge, the pub and the glowing sludge that passes for a river. You might walk for a bit but you ain't gonna settle anywhere else, and you certainly ain't gonna live the rest of your short life staring into the sheer fucking disappointment in the eyes of everyone you serve a pint to. Maggsy raised a better gal than that. Or just a more prideful one, I ain't ever been able to tell which".

Lizzy glared at the floor, as though every speck of dirt had personally offended her. Seconds passed.

"I hate it when you're right."

"Think I'd have lasted an arvo running this place if I wasn't?"

Dark fell upon the Bridge. Most everyone had turned in for the night, leaving only Johnno and Lizzy to continue poring through the aged and crumbling boxes that held the towns only record of a time before the war, before the world had bathed in nuclear fire. Those documents could have been a treasure trove for some scribe a world away, but the pair had eyes on a more pressing issue: Finding a god damn map of old Adelaide, the dead city to the south. At least they hoped it was dead, the tendency for traders to disappear down the cracked remnants of the road and never return was much less intimidating if you could imagine they merely found nothing and took the short route back home. The work was slow, mindless and yet somehow demanded their full attention. Lizzy was grateful for this, because it kept unfortunate questions from her mind. Questions like "where in the blazes is our third man?" and "How many pieces am I going to cut Stephanie into once this is all over?".

From somewhere in the archive stacks at the back of the dusty old council building that smelled of must and bluey shit came a strangled gasp, and Johnno's raspy voice rang out.

"Got something back here, Lizzy. Might want to take a look at it."  
"You gonna bring it out here, or do I have to walk back there and risk breaking my neck on all this crap?"

"This isn't something you can move"  
"Fine, I'm coming" she said, stepping carefully around piles of refuse and stacks of half decayed old books, fumbling in the near dark.

'Something', in this case, turned out to be an enormous old pinboard wedged between the back wall and a rather unsteady stack of old paper, the foam having long rotted away leaving a frame of wooden stakes holding together sheets of crumbling particle board. Stuck to it were dozens of paper scraps, scrawled on in a faded blue ink that was barely visible in the candlelight.

"Impressive. So what the hell is it?" Lizzy muttered. She's barked her shin on a hidden desk and the throbbing pain had done little for her temperament.

"Don't know entirely. Half of its illegible. But it appears to be an old inventory list. Sort of."

"You mean we've found the bloody storekeepers diary from fifty years ago? How's that help us."

"I think the old tradesman-general wrote it. Big lists of what we had and where to scrounge replacements."

"Any use to us?"

"I haven't read half of it. I don't know how long it's been here. I don't rightly know what I'm even looking for or what half these words are for."

"Thought you knew everything about machines."

"Almost. These are anatomical words. I don't think the old tradie liked the mayor much. Or the sergeant. Or anyone really".

"Guess what you're doing tonight then."

"Reading?"

"Reading. Let me know when you've got something worth scraping a shin over". And with that, Lizzy walked slowly and carefully back towards the door, retracing her steps as though at any moment a wild desk might leap out to savage her knee.

Hours passed. Dawn had come, lazed around for breakfast and then duly departed for the rigours of the day. Lizzy slept fitfully in her bed above the pub. Johnno pored over scribblings and stared at scraps, willing the arrangement to make some sort of sense. Stephanie reclined in her office, sleep abandoned, wondering just when the Sergeant would manage to drag Darryl around so the two of them could quietly explain to the trapper just why he'd be giving up his regular job for a special round. The kid was already two days late getting back. Any longer and they'd have to start thinking about what to do if he'd caught wind of the plan, made the smart choice and done a runner for Meningie. Or if he'd died out there, as so many others had over the years.

Hours later, the sun settling comfortably into its midday heat, Elisabeth stirred. The memories of the last day hit her hard, and she cringed as the argument with the Mayor played through her head again. She'd lost afore she even knew there was a fight and that stung her heart as much as the fear ahead stung her head. But Steph had been right, there was no option but to get moving as soon as possible. And so Lizzy resolved to do what she could before anything else went wrong. Packing was the order of the day. Clothes, petty cash from the tip jar, a first aid kit pried loose from the bathroom wall, the heavy metal-shod hunk of jarrah wood she used as a club kept hidden under the counter, the immaculately maintained revolver plucked from its home in the cash register, even the rough, stained and thoroughly vile-looking leather vest she had hung out the back (it had to be kept out there. Customers complained that it smelled as though someone had died in it. They weren't wrong, as a hastily sewn up set of holes in the back would attest). If she had to go, Liz thought, she was going to go with everything she could possibly need. Especially if she decided not to come back. Satisfied that she had stashed everything relevant in her swag or on it, she left it on the unmade bed and walked out to greet the people she was about to risk her life for.

Across the other side of the town, a tall, lithe and rather scruffy looking bloke tanned even darker than his normal ruddy skin was having a terrible day. Darryl – Dazza to his mates, who were few and far between – was as puzzled as a man could be. He1 had been looking forward to the few luxuries of town life, spending his fresh coin from the uncured hides in his pack on a bath and bath partner, a few tins of Barry's booze, maybe even a meal he hadn't had to cook on a spluttering campfire. But the Mayor herself had shown up at the general store looking for him and, with nary a word, dragged him back to her office. Things had rapidly gone downhill from there. He'd been berated for his lateness, verbally bludgeoned into agreeing to an obviously suicidal adventure, given merely a day to enjoy himself before heading back out and, worst of all, cheerily informed by the old curmudgeon that this was entirely his fault. She figured young Ronny for the shooter and Ronny was definitely a mate of Darryl's, a younger son of a 'rino farmer that had taken to the barely older wildmans laconic tales of bush survival. Course, Ronny was too much of a kid (and his father too much of an important man) to be sent on something like this. So in his place, Darryl was going. Whether he relished the idea or not.

He'd almost stormed out of her office. He had settled for draining her entire pint glass. She'd glared at him for that and then dropped her bombshell.

"Look, kiddo, I know you don't like this one bloody bit. Neither do I but someones gotta go and I ain't exactly spoiled for choice." She paused, refilling her glass from a dark longnecked bottle. "I figure you for an honest bloke, so I'm not gonna cuff you to the ute or anything. But fair's fair. You make a run for Meningie or try to cut out by the Bend, I'm gonna tell Ronny you sold him out. Then I'm gonna tell his old man just why Ronny's so cut up over you leaving. Do we have an understanding?"

Darryl stared back. He felt a lot of things. Betrayed, hurt that she'd suggested he might actually betray the town, hurt that she'd even had a pretty good idea of his escape plan.

"Ok." He drained her glass again. "You're like a fucking drop bear, you know that? Always ambushin people"

"Drop bears don't charge for their beer. If they even exist." She said, with a wry grin creeping across her features. "Chuck a couple of Kanga's on the table before you leave".

Johnno was having a much better day than Lizzy or Darryl. He still hadn't deciphered parts of the paper trail that stood across from him, but the night had been productive. He now knew at least twenty more terms for various anatomically improbable – if not impossible – acts but more importantly he had an idea. The old tradie who'd put together the inventory hadn't exactly been anticipating any need to dig out the well, but he had been something of a car nut. Various sketches of complicated manufacturing equipment and rambling screeds about the worth of different models made up perhaps half the undamaged bits nailed to the pinboard. Enough, in fact, for Johnno to begin his own sketches on how to adapt parts from that machinery to dig a big ol' hole in the ground. While he still couldn't read large chunks of the old mans atrocious scrawl, it had been hard to mistake the printed map he'd found jammed under one corner of the pinboard. It clearly marked the location of various factories around the area that the tradie thought might still have contained spare parts, machinery or even just plans. A few hours spent cross-referencing that with the hand drawn maps maintained by the towns few trappers had yielded results. He now had the beginnings of a route.

It was perhaps late afternoon now, the sun continuing its leisurely stroll across the burnt sky. Lizzy stood behind the counter at the pub, serving pints for perhaps the last time. Stephanie had been right about that too – Lizzy could barely stomach the look of fear and pride in the customers faces, she didn't want to think about the pity, the disappointment that would've been written across their eyes if she'd refused the call. It was still quiet in the bar, an hour or two before the evening rush and Lizzy settled in to polish glasses, joke with the few regulars already present and keep an eye on the travellers who'd set up shop in one corner of the place. Barry was already well into his cups, gesticulating wildly and discussing some new idea or experiment with ancient Bernard, a fat old drunk whose face sported wrinkles that might have come from before the bombs. Kerry paced back and forth, taking meals from the kitchen out to the travellers and scraping away empty plates. A few scattered others roamed in and out. A typical afternoon for the bar. Except for the presence of Darryl up the back, steadily pounding away shots from a bottle of Barry's moonshine. The trapper never drank in the bar, always preferring to grab a handful of tinnies to take away and drink up on the hill. He also wasn't one to drink so alone or so grimly, slamming back drinks like a man hell bent on blacking himself out as efficiently as possible. Still, Lizzy couldn't complain. Darryl had paid good money for that bottle, even if he had paid in a small pile of silver coins.

That was when the doors opened, admitting the bustling for of Stephanie Cho, who strode straight through the saloon doors and up to the bar as though she owned the entire place.

"Johnno's got something, Lizzy. He'll be here in a few minutes to talk it out, reckons we should use the back room."

"Fine, I'll get Kerry to watch the bar. Hope its worth dying over." Lizzy said, throwing her hands up in frustration

"Relax, kid. Dying's the last thing I want you to do".

"That wasn't funny the first time you said it Auntie, hasn't got any funnier in the fifteen years since".

"Really, Lizzy, you just don't appreciate the classics. Now grab Darryl, you'll need him in this as well".

Elisabeth and Stephanie stood in the back of the council office, craning over the pinboard and trying without much luck to interpret both the original scrawl and Johnno's impossible chicken scratch notes. Luckily the mechanical genius was on hand to translate both.

"I'll have to run the route past Darryl when he wakes up" Johnno said, pointing out the slumped form of the towns trapper, passed out in the corner "but I think we've got it. The old timers never foresaw this so I've had to adapt a few of my own ideas but I know what I need to make the well digger. And now I know where to get the gear. There's an old manufacturing plant, perhaps thirty k's north of Adelaide proper. That'll have what we need, I guarantee it."  
"You sure it'll actually be there? Cos that sounds like something you'd loot for a few coins" Lizzy butted in.

"It'll be there. This is specialist technology, no good for repairs . Just manufacturing. Its bulky, you'd need to cut it out of its mountings and cart it off in parts."

"And if its not there?"

Johnno glared back, the annoyance mounting. "I can rig it up from other parts. I just need the site. This will work".

"Congratulations everyone. You have a plan. Be ready to leave at dawn, I've already had Johnno chuck the stuff you need in the ute so just grab what ya have at home.

"What kind of stuff?"

"Rations, fuel, water – what little we have -, weapons and bullets. Had him lay in a couple of bangsticks for you Lizzy, and a plinking rifle for Darryl if he's sobered up enough to use it."

Stephanie stretched against the wall theatrically and stifled a yawn.

"Course, the ute's only got two seats. Hope one of you likes riding shotgun".


End file.
